Kogan 24" Full HD LED TV - DVD Series

This LED TV has decent picture quality at a bargain price

Expert Rating

4.00/5

Pros

Decent picture

Very good price

Cons

No 100Hz mode

Slow response for gaming

Bottom Line

Kogan's 24in LED TV is cheap, and while it doesn't push the boundaries in image quality it's a generally solid performer. We wouldn't recommend it for serious gaming -- there's a bit of lag -- and the lack of 100Hz image smoothing means fast sport doesn't look excellent, but for $219 we're impressed.

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Price

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(Selling at 3 stores)

The Kogan 24in Full HD LED TV is, as the name suggests, a Full HD 1080p TV with a 24in screen size. This makes it a good size for a study, bedroom or child’s play room, and it’s very attractively priced as well.

Kogan 24in Full HD LED TV: Design, setup and specifications

The Kogan 24in looks about as generic as an LCD or plasma TV can get. That’s not a bad thing — it looks a lot better than the 2008-era LG Scarlet or the Grundig Cinemo. The black gloss bezels on the top and sides of the Kogan 24in Full HD LED TV are acceptably thin, but the lower bezel is thicker and betrays the TV’s budget design.

The only distinguishing feature on the front of the bezel is the white Kogan logo. The base of the TV attaches with a single thumbscrew, and is wide enough to support the panel comfortably and securely.

The Kogan 24in Full HD LED TV that we tested includes a built-in DVD player on the right-hand side. It runs quietly and quickly; the couple of DVDs we tested were loaded in about 10 seconds. You can purchase a 24in TV from Kogan without the DVD player for a $20 saving.

The back of the Kogan 24in Full HD LED TV hides two HDMI, composite, component, VGA and audio inputs arranged towards the rear and left side. There’s also a USB 2.0 port that can play AVI, MP4, JPG, BMP, WMA and MP3 files, and can function as a PVR for recording TV.

Kogan 24in Full HD LED TV: Video quality and performance

The Kogan 24in is a very simple TV. There’s none of the extra features that are commonplace on TVs from big brands like Samsung, Sony and LG — no ‘smart’ features, no 3D, no built-in Wi-Fi. You’re not going to get those for the Kogan’s $219 asking price.

The 24in screen of the Kogan is a Full HD 1080p panel, lit by LEDs arranged around the screen’s edge. This LED TV design is less power-intensive than older cold-cathode fluorescent screen lighting, and allows for thinner TVs.

Image quality is surprisingly good for the Kogan 24in’s asking price. Having 1920x1080 pixels packed into the comparatively screen size, Full HD content from a Blu-ray player — we used the Sony BDP-S580 — looks as detailed as it should be. The TV’s default settings are not great; we had to lower brightness, sharpness, and contrast to get a more detailed picture.

The screen’s 1000:1 contrast ratio is par for the course for budget TVs. There’s a fair bit of detail lost in darker and lighter areas of the screen during high-contrast scenes — our The Dark Knight test sequence, which shows pin-pricks of bright light against an almost-black background, looked grey and dark detail was not visible.

This TV doesn’t have a 100Hz mode, so fast motion on-screen can become blurry or jittery depending on what you’re watching. We wouldn’t use the Kogan 24in if its main purpose was watching sport or fast-paced action movies. Similarly, fast-paced gaming is a bit difficult due to a reasonably high level of input lag — any movements you make on an Xbox 360 or PS3 controller, for example, take around half a second to occur on-screen. This is troublesome if you want to play twitch-based action or racing games.

Of course, you won’t be picking up the Kogan 24in Full HD LED TV to be the only movie-watching screen in your house. As a TV for casual viewing the Kogan does a perfectly reasonable job, but if you’re a cinemaphile you’ll notice the difference between this TV and one costing ten times as much.

The speakers of the Kogan 24in TV are a weak point. At a combined total of 6 Watts, they’re only just over a quarter of the power of most 32in TVs, and you have to turn them up to get audio at a decent volume. There’s not much headroom, so the TVs aren’t powerful enough for a larger room — they’re fine for anyone sitting closer than three metres or so, though. At full volume, there’s a small amount of audio distortion that manifests as harsh high notes and clipped low notes.

Kogan 24in Full HD LED TV: Conclusion

The Kogan 24in Full HD LED TV may not have the best picture quality, or the biggest screen size, but it is cheap — impressively so. What you get for a little more than $200 is a decent 24in 1080p Full HD screen, and that’s enough.

The screen was particularly good. It is bright and visible from most angles, however heat is an issue, particularly around the Windows button on the front, and on the back where the battery housing is located.

My first impression after unboxing the Q702 is that it is a nice looking unit. Styling is somewhat minimalist but very effective. The tablet part, once detached, has a nice weight, and no buttons or switches are located in awkward or intrusive positions.

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